Big spenders

vehicles at the car parks and walking into town to visit the local shops and businesses.

ready to deal with the avalanche of vehicles registered at peak times such as Easter or the summer.” Sr González highlighted the “splendid behaviour of visitors, who had no problem leaving their

“The town works and does so in an organised manner,” said the councillor.

Visit the municipal website benidorm.org to find out where the free car parks are.

TOURISTS from the UK and France are the biggest spenders in the Valencian Region.

The news comes as tourism celebrates the figures for 2022, which improve on those of the last year before the pandemic, and predictions are for an even better result in 2023.

Foreign tourists left the Valencian Community with more than €6 billion in its pocket in 2022.

Records confirm the recovery of the sector after the effects of the pandemic surpassed those marked in 2019, the last year of normality before the outbreak of Covid. An experimental study by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) reveals that visitors from other countries spent or withdrew cash with their credit cards for a total amount of €6,750,185,386.

The figure would be even higher if the INE included cash transactions and pocket money that tourists bring already changed from their countries of origin.

HOSBEC estimates that it would mean more than 55 per cent of the total, which is the percentage of tourist production that corresponds to Alicante within the Valencian Community.